When Oxana heard that the next day I would be taking the train to Yoshkar-Ola by myself she laughed. In fact she laughed on and off about it the entire evening. She said that no one down there would speak English and I would be in a compartment with 3 other non-English speaking Russians and I would not know what to do or when to get off the train. She was very close.
Based on the prior day's mishaps I did not want to risk missing my train by trying the subway. Even though I now knew how to get on the subway. And it is a good thing because the hotel desk clerk's directions for which subway stop to use for the train station was wrong.
The Kazanskgay station is impressive handling up to 20 trains simuiltaneously. I arive there plenty early and wandered about looking for some indicatin of where my train might board. Then I wandered about looking for someone who might speak English. These was one lady behind a desk of some sort, couldn' really say doing what, and she told me that I needed to go to track #16. So I went there and started to go thru the turn style. At that point all kinds of security people started waving their arms and yelling in Russian. I showed them my train ticket and they jestured that I needed to go to the next set of turn styles. The same thing happened therenad they jestured that I should go back to the first set. I walked back there and they did not seem real pleased to see me so I did not try to go thru again. But I did find the ticket booth where train tickets are purchased and I tried to ask them where to go. I visited 4 different booths, three of them pointed in different directions and the 4th did not even attempt an answer. I was beginning to see the wisdom behind Oxana's laughter.
After a lot of walking I sat down in front of a huge board that showed what I thought were ll of the outgoing trains with tracks number and departure times to almost all of the trains except for the one that I thought was mine and pondered what might be my next move without after missing my train. Then magically about 15 minutes a before the train was scheduled to leave a track number showed up on the board and amazingly it was the track right behind me (not #16). I turned around and the sign above the track now had a city and departure time whcih was close to the time on my ticket. The city name was in Russian but to was about the same length and a few of the letters matched. I decided to roll the dice and get on it.
I had never ridden a train so this was exciting. My compartment was for 4 with 2 upper and 2 lower bunks. The conductor let me on the train so I assumed it was the right one. I sat down and watched people board. Pretty soon a man about my age and his girl friend (I think) came in also. He introduced himsel as Alex. He spoke just enough English to realize that I was from the USA (or ooo, es, ah as he said it, I assumed that he meant USA so I nodded yes). Finally a very young man came in. They talked amongst themselves while I watched out the window. That was interesting until we got into the coutryside and there was nothing to look at but forest. I think they talked some about me also because I heard "Mark" and "ooo, es, ah" and I hoped he was telling him I was American.
After a while I noticed that the train kept stopping and I wondered why so I went to the window to find out that people were getting on and off. I looked at the different stops and I ralized that most of them did not have a name that I could recognize from the car I was in. This is what Oxana was talking about. I would not know when to get off the train.
Finally the young man started to talk in very good English. His name was Mishka and he was a cadet from the naval academy in St. Petersburg heading home to Yoshkar-Ola for a holiday. He was later joined by a friend fro the academy and between the 2 of them they had a lot of beer (being college students and also military) which they shared generously with me. After a while The older man tried to join in as best as he could. We talked about Russia, America, beer, the cold war, the military, Bush, Putin, vodka... Then the 2 cadets left and the older man's son came in. He looked to be about 10 or 12 but aparently had been learning English in school and was anxious to use it.
Together they were able to ask a lot of fairly basic questions which I answered. Finally, after a fair amount of trust had been established, the subject turned to the cold war. With some effort he explained that when he was young the government had told them how America was "bad for them." I didn't really understand this until he took his hands like he was firing a rifle. I nodded and and responded that we had heard the same things. I told him that this is one of the reasons that I had come to Russia, to learn about them first hand. Then he held out his hand and I took it and without saying a word I think that we both understood that glad to be friends instead of enemies.
After a while Mishka came back and said that at the next train stop there would be souvineers. I think.... Then he said "Come on" so I went. I was right. It was a lot like being at the Tijuana border crossing. I bought a few souvineers and started back for the train. As I was tryint to get on the train there were 2 very persistent men trying to sell glassware. At one point one of them was so close he was pressing them into my stomach. Then I felt something going down my leg and and spun away and reached for my pocked just in tome to knock my wallet out of his hand. I picked it up off of the ground, pushed the other guy out of the way and got back on the train.
The next morning i woke up and immediately noticed that the scenery was moving past the window from right to left instead of left to right. I panicked a bit thinking that I had missed my stop and was now on my way back to Moscow. Once Mishka woke up he explained that this was normal. I, got myself cleaned up (shaving on a moving train is an adventure in itself). After a while Mishka showed up at the door of the cabin and said, "Come on, we're here." Thank you Mishka!
These pictures were taken out the window of the train but they are misleading because 99% of the time all I could see was forest. Not even farm land. Just a wall of trees. But every once in a while there would be a small village.
